We ranked each ZIP on a weighted average of the median home price for single family homes and condominiums as of Sep. 21, 2010. The real estate market data were collected by Altos Research, a Mountain View, Calif.-based research firm that tracks over 20,000 ZIP codes. The data cover the asking price in the residential sales market. The price change is expressed as a year-over-year percentage. In the case of very small inventories, the small sample size may yield a significant price swing. A change of zero indicates an unchanged or flat year-over-year price change. Some ZIPs were not included in last year’s data set; for these, we could not calculate the year-over-year price change. These ZIPs are marked "NA."

Income figures are from the U.S. Census Bureau's most recent ZIP code survey, the 2000 decennial census. For ZIP codes that were created by the U.S. Postal Service since then, demographic information is not available. These ZIPs are marked "NA."